Mass Murder Comes To Small-Town America

     Today marks a grim anniversary in Wisconsin state history. 16 years ago, on June 9th, 2007, Delavan, Wisconsin, a town of 8,000 more than 40 miles southwest of Milwaukee, became the site of an unspeakable tragedy. 

     On that moderate late spring-early summer day, Ambrosio Analco's perverse sense of what being a human being is about showed its true colors. An alcoholic, Analco had a long history of abusing his girlfriend, Nicole McAffee, going through her mail in a futile search of evidence of infidelity and even driving her to a graveyard with a gun in his hand and telling her to run. 

     In June 2007, he murdered not only McAffee, but her sister, Ashley Huerta; the twin sons he and McAffee had; and a friend who was visiting their apartment. He shot their ONE-YEAR-OLD daughter in the chest in an obvious attempt to kill her, but, fortunately (although how she feels about it as a 17-year-old young woman who has carried this trauma for her entire life could be different), she survived the ordeal. Another relative lept out a window to escape and described parts of what happened: he shot Ashely Huerta twice as she tried to flee before going on his killing rampage. He saved Nicole for last, shooting her as she held her young daughter, Jasmine, and begged Analco not to kill the young girl. Analco, cowardly for shooting three adults but even more cowardly for shooting three kids, two mortally, made himself the sixth fatality that day. If only he had simply done that without taking down good people with him.

     In the aftermath of the shooting, the police released few details, leaving the grieving community in confusion and anxiety for days to come. People with substance abuse and mental illness problems do not belong having weapons. Domestic abusers, whether or not they are married to the victim, do not belong having guns. Gun control will not save everyone, but it has been proven to drastically reduce the number of fatalities from mass shootings and other forms of homicides. Maybe Nicole, Ashley, that friend, and those three kids could have been spared one of the worst fates imaginable if Ambrosio Analco did not have a gun.